In the News The commodity-subsidy scheme
Far from barely getting by, however, farmers had their most profitable year in history thanks to subsidies and sky-high prices. A safety net should provide protection against loss, but it need not be designed so that farmers come out ahead after natural disasters.
We are also far from the days of an economy based largely on small farmers. The share of Americans working on farms has dropped from 40 percent in 1900 to 1 percent today, while crop production has multiplied several times over.
